With the evolution of the process of planning in India, emphasis has gradually shifted to decentralised planning to facilitate drawing up development strategies that are sustainable, area-specific and take into account local needs and problems. Interdependence among various sectors make decentralised planning at micro-level a complex and information-sensitive task, involving a large matrix of sectoral data relating to local resources, demographic and socio-economic factors. It also requires appropriate methodologies for data analysis and processing. The Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) was launched by the Department of Science & Technology to take care of these issues. As part of this programme, development of spatial decision support systems for land and water management has been identified as a thrust area. NRDMS has incorporated the study of ecosystems and landscape dynamics in the larger framework of land and water management.
Further, in the ninth five-year plan (1997-2002), the DST laid stress on the evolution of sustainable strategies for the economic development of the ecologically vulnerable Himalayan region. It recognised the growing need for a resource database encompassing sectors like meteorology, hydrology, geology, biology, glaciology and geography. The proposed database was expected to be useful in the evaluation and monitoring of climate, surface and groundwater systems, land use and forest, flora and fauna of the Himalayas and in hazard mitigation as well. This is in the backdrop of several exercises carried out by the Planning Commission, Government of India, during the past two decades through several special committees/ working groups.